Birthday suit the bare essential for cruise

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Dressing for dinner is taken literally on the nude ship Flamenco, writes Giles Tremlett from Madrid.

It has been billed as the first naked tour of the Mediterranean, a week-long cruise for 450 people with the wearing of clothes mostly optional and sometimes banned.

The first big-ship nudist cruise of the Mediterranean, on the 17,000-tonne Flamenco, was hailed as the biggest naked event in these waters since Aphrodite appeared in her birthday suit floating on a scallop shell.

The cruise left Barcelona on Monday with a passenger list of mostly Spaniards, but with Britons the second-largest group. "It is just like a normal cruise, but for people who like being nude," said a spokeswoman for the Spanish organisers, Gheisa Tours.

While the crew would remain clothed, passengers would be obliged to dress only for dinner, she said. Clothes of any kind would be banned from the sun deck and swimming pool.

"They will have towels, of course, for reasons of hygiene," the spokeswoman said. Clothes will remain optional at all other times and in all other places, except during excursions on shore.

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The nude cruisers will be taking in some of the sights of the Mediterranean. But every stop also includes an opportunity for passengers to take off their clothes at a new location, be it a French hillside nudist club or a beach in Ibiza.

In addition, passengers can do everything from gamble to disco dance in whatever state of undress they desire.

Not everything, however, will be about achieving all-over tans or enjoying naked frolics in the water.

A series of conferences with titles such as "Nudism and Parallel Forms of Discrimination" will be available to those who take their nudity seriously.

Thirteen children were among those to have joined the cruise.

One couple were due to be married yesterday by the Flamenco's captain, Joannis Notarakis, though organisers did not say whether it would be a naked ceremony.